Read, Scream, Repeat

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Farshore

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

farshore.co.uk

HarperCollinsPublishers,

Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper, Dublin 1, D01 C9W8

Wolf Moon © Kirsty Applebaum 2023

Charlie’s Twelfth © Sharna Jackson 2023

Game Over © Aisha Bushby 2023

The Light Bulb © Rachel Delahaye 2023

Talos Springs © Elle McNicoll 2023

The Pond © Jennifer Killick 2023

Underlay Underlings © Joseph Coelho 2023

Deep Water © Dan Smith 2023

The Green Ghost © Kat Ellis 2023

The Glass House © Polly Ho-Yen 2023

The Attic Room © Phil Smith 2023

Hide and Seek © J.T.Williams 2023

A Cry From the Graveyard © Jasbinder Bilan 2023

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

eISBN 978 0 00 852781 5

CPI Group (UK) Ltd

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

Wolf Moon

Kirsty Applebaum

Charlie’s Twelfth

Sharna Jackson

Game Over

Aisha Bushby

The Light Bulb

Rachel Delahaye

Talos Springs

Elle McNicoll

The Pond

Jennifer Killick

Underlay Underlings

Joseph Coelho

Deep Water

Dan Smith

The Green Ghost

Kat Ellis

The Glass House

Polly Ho-Yen

The Attic Room

Phil Hickes

Hide and Seek

J.T. Williams

A Cry from the Graveyard

Jasbinder Bilan

Dear Reader,

Do you enjoy a heart-lurching Jump-scare?

What about spiders-crawling-down-your-back suspense? Or scenes so spooky that you shudder? If you are answering these questions with an excited ‘YES!’, then this is the book for you!

Read, Scream, Repeat is a collection of shorthorror stories. Thirteen heart-thudding tales of terror. They’ve been created by some of the most terrifyingly talented authors writing for young people right now, and I am delighted by the levels of chill they’ve all reached in their darkly different ways.

The Read Scream, Repeat authors have conjured up human-hungry creatures, missing skulls, zombies, creepy dolls, curses, ghosts and sinister birthday parties you will never be able to leave. Each story is frightening enough to leave you with a brain full of ‘what ifs’ and with goosebumps on your goosebumps.

And they’re short, so they’re perfect for sharing with your friends at breaktime, or sneaking in after lights out, or even reading around a campfire in the middle of a night-time forest if you’re brave enough (make sure you keep an eye on those trees).

It has been a spine-shuddering Joy to contribute to and compile this collection of stories. I hope that reading it makes your horror-loving heart sing, though you may want to steer clear of old nursery rhymes for a while. So please: read, scream, repeat in an infinite loop of doom if that’s your thing. And make sure you tell your friends — it’s much more fun to suffer with others than it is to wander the forest path alone...

Good luck!

JENNIFER KILLICK

‘D on’t talk to any strangers!’

‘Course I won’t.’ Toby shivered while Mum squeezed him goodbye. ‘Stop fussing, I’ll be OK.’ Thank goodness she wouldn’t be able to follow him on to the railway platform. She really was worrying way too much. Literally all he had to do was sit on the train until the very last stop and Gran would be waiting for him at the other end.

It was bitingly cold. Toby managed to put his ticket in the slot without taking his gloves off.

‘Stay focused on getting to Gran’s,’ Mum called after him. ‘Don’t let that overactive imagination of yours run away with itself.’

Could she be any more embarrassing? Toby glanced around the platform to see if anyone had heard, but there were only about six people there and none of them seemed interested in him. They were rubbing their gloved hands and breathing steamy breath into the frosty air.

‘If you sit by the window I might be able to give you a final wave,’ shouted Mum.

Toby looked up at the sky. There’d be a full moon later. A wolf moon - that’s what they called it in January, because someplace, somewhere, there were more wolves howling around the time of the January full moon. You didn’t get too many wolves howling around here, though, no matter what time of year it was.

A deep rumbling started up from the track. Toby covered his ears as the train screamed into the station.

Toby stood in the aisle between the seats. Where should he sit? There were only two other people in his carriage: a lady in a denim jacket sitting in a window seat to the right, and a man a bit further back, out of sight except for the top of his head, which was bald and tattooed.

Oh – Mum had wanted to wave him off, hadn’t she? She’d been really annoying at the station, but now that he was on the train Toby had a horrible feeling he was missing her a little bit already.

I mean, here he was, in a tiny space with two complete strangers – and they were all about to zoom off into the middle of absolutely nowhere. They could be murderers for all he knew. Or kidnappers. Or master criminals. Or government assassins. Or -

Stay focused on getting to Gran’s, Toby reminded himself.

He sat down next to the window on the left and tucked his rucksack between his knees. Sure enough, there was Mum, waving at him from behind the ticket gates. He gave her a thumbs up.

She got smaller and smaller as the train pulled away.

Toby stretched out his legs. His seat had extra foot space because it was one of those ones where the seats opposite face in towards you. The opposite seats were empty – well, almost empty. There was a bag on the one straight in front of him. It was oblong, like a small suitcase, and it had a flowery pattern all over it. Toby wondered if it belonged to denim-jacket lady.

He unwound his scarf and pushed it into the top of his rucksack. His mind wandered to tonight’s full moon. He thought about werewolves. What would it be like, to transform for one night every month? To have thick hair sprout up all over your body? To feel blade-sharp teeth pushing through your gums? He pictured himself on the prowl through lamplit streets, searching for prey.

‘Does that belong to you, kid?’

Toby jerked out of his daydream. ‘Pardon?’ he said.

‘Does that belong to you?’ It was denim-jacket lady. She was pointing at the flowery bag.

As if, thought Toby. He felt like saying he’d drop down dead of embarrassment if his mum made him carry a bag like that, but he’d promised he wouldn’t talk to strangers so he just shook his head instead.

‘Mmmm.’ Denim-jacket lady frowned. There was a sticker on her top pocket. It said: I give blood. She turned to tattoo man. ‘Excuse me?’

Tattoo man looked up. ‘What?’

‘There’s some unaccompanied luggage here.’ She pointed at the bag again. ‘Is it yours?’

Tattoo man stood up. He was right behind the seat with the bag on it. He reached his arm over and -

‘Don’t touch it!’ said Toby. ‘It might be a bomb!’ Immediately, he realized he’d both spoken to a stranger and let his overactive imagination run away with itself. Double whammy. He squeezed his lips tight shut.

‘Kid’s right,’ said denim-jacket lady. ‘Maybe don’t touch it.’

‘It’s certainly not mine, anyway,’ said tattoo man.

‘In that case, I’m going to find the guard.’ Denim-jacket lady stood up. ‘What is it they say these days? See it, say it, sort it?’

‘Isn’t it See it, say it, sort-ED?’ said Toby. Oh no – he’d done it again! Be quiet, he told himself.

Denim-jacket lady gave another frown. ‘Either way I think it works.’ She disappeared through to the next carriage.

Toby stared at the bag. Was it a bomb? Almost certainly, he reckoned. If he unzipped it, he’d probably see a mass of coloured wires and some blocks of explosive, all fixed to a ticking timer with half an hour left on it. And half an hour would totally not be long enough for the bomb-disposal team to reach them, so Toby would have to try to deactivate it himself, following instructions from army experts over speakerphone. But, at the crucial moment, the train would go through a tunnel and connection would be lost and Toby would have to make his best guess because there’d only be seconds left now and of course he’d guess red because that’s his favourite colour and the bomb would stop ticking and Toby would have single-handedly saved everyone on the train and -

The carriage door slid open. It was denim-jacket lady. ‘Not a guard to be seen.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Budget cuts.’

She stood in the aisle, stuck her hands on her hips and looked at the flowery bag. ‘We should get rid of it,’ she said. ‘Chuck it off.’

Toby stared at her. So did tattoo man.

‘Chuck it off?’ said tattoo man. ‘You mean, throw it off the train?’

‘Yep. There’s a good thirty-five minutes until the next stop and that bag is making me very nervous. We should just shove it through the window and be done with it.’

Toby had to admit it was making him nervous too. Maybe he’d text Mum and ask what she thought they should do. She was good at this kind of thing. He delved into his rucksack for his phone.

‘But –’ denim-jacket lady squinted at the top of the window – ‘only that narrow part opens up, so I’m not sure it’ll fit through.’

Toby found his phone. Completely dead. He’d forgotten to charge it.

Tattoo man leaned over the seat and checked out the flowery bag. His tattoos weren’t only on his head. He had a curly-lettered word inked on to the back of each hand. They were sort of sideways and upside down to Toby, but he could still read them.

ANGEL and DEMON.

‘It’ll fit.’ Tattoo man patted the window with his DEMON hand. ‘I used to work on the railways. Seventeen years. There’s a trick to getting these open wider than you think. But . . . I dunno. What if it’s full of someone’s most treasured possessions? Maybe we should take a look inside it first.’

‘And risk getting blown up?’ said denim-jacket lady. ‘Better to just get rid of it. The longer it sits there, the more likely it is to explode.’

Toby shifted in his seat. Of all the places he could have picked to sit in, he’d chosen the getting- blown-up place. He was starting to feel very hot and sweaty.

‘You sure it doesn’t belong to the boy?’ said tattoo man. ‘Come on, nipper –’ he winked at Toby – ‘own up – the bag’s yours, isn’t it?’

That disgusting flowery bag? Toby glanced at denim-jacket lady. She was staring at him too! They both thought it was his!

‘It’s not mine,’ he blurted out. ‘It’s horrible! I’d never carry a bag like that!’

Tattoo man lifted his eyebrows.

‘That’s it, then,’ said denim-jacket lady. ‘We chuck it off. I’m not waiting any longer.’

Tattoo man pulled open the window and an icy whoosh swept into the carriage. The rhythmic clatter of the speeding train roared around them. Toby felt horribly close to the cold metal tracks and the tree branches clawing at the windows.

Tattoo man fiddled with the hinges and managed to open the window a bit wider.

‘Right, then,’ said denim-jacket lady. ‘Easy does it.’ Slowly, carefully, as if it was made of the most delicate glass, she lifted the bag up and rested it on the rim of the window.

‘Stop!’ Tattoo man put his ANGEL hand on top of the bag. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I’m having second thoughts. I don’t think we should do it.’

Toby held his breath. If the bag exploded, they’d be blown to smithereens.

‘Look,’ said denim-jacket lady. ‘There’s no guard and it’s almost thirty minutes before we reach the next stop. If it doesn’t have a bomb in it and we chuck it out, what’s the worst that could happen? Someone has to go and buy a new pair of pyjamas? But if it does have a bomb in it and we don’t chuck it out, it’s goodbye and goodnight to all of us. We won’t be worried about unaccompanied luggage after that; we’ll all be riding that big train in the sky.’

She pushed at the bag but tattoo man held it firm.

Toby’s chest tightened. The likelihood that he’d really be able to diffuse an actual real-life bomb, he realized, was pretty low. Even with instructions from army experts over speakerphone.

‘We need to think about this a bit longer,’ said tattoo man.

‘We do not need to think about it!’ said denimjacket lady. ‘We need to save this train and save ourselves! It’s down to us!’

Branches knocked against the window and cold air swept around the carriage. The train kept up its steady pulse on the tracks: chank-chank-chank- chank-chank.

‘It’s down to us to make a carefully considered decision,’ said tattoo man.

Toby’s heart seemed to have clambered up his windpipe and decided to hang out at the back of his mouth. His whole throat was beating. The bag must have a bomb inside, mustn’t it? Why else would someone leave it on its own?

‘If this explodes before I manage to get rid of it, it’s on you,’ replied denim-jacket lady. She tried to push the bag again, but the ANGEL hand held it still.

Toby thought about all those wires and explosives. He thought about the timer on its unstoppable countdown. The train drummed in his ears, sounding just like a clock. Chank-chank-chank- chank-chank-chank-chank. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick- tick-tick.

Denim-jacket lady was right. They were running out of time.

Wires.

Explosives.

Smithereens.

Goodbye and goodnight.

Chank-chank-chank-chank-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick tick-tick-tick-tick –

Toby leaped up from his seat.

He gave the flowery bag a huge, two-handed shove . . . and it was gone.

‘What on earth?’ Tattoo man looked around, stunned.

‘Good call, kid,’ said denim-jacket lady.

Tattoo man sighed. He closed the window and the carriage went quiet again.

Toby sat back down and tucked his hands under his thighs. The seat material felt weird – both smooth and prickly all at once.

He tried to plan what he’d do with Gran this evening.

He tried to think about who he’d put in the Arsenal line-up for next week’s match.

He tried to remember the names of all twelve full moons.

But the only thing he could think about was the flowery bag.

The carriage was suffocatingly, overwhelmingly, mind-bendingly full of the bag’s not-there-ness.

Not long afterwards, an old lady entered the carriage. She walked unsteadily down the aisle.

She was, thought Toby, exactly the sort of old lady who might own a flowery bag.

‘Where’s my case?’ said the old lady. ‘My floral case. It was right there.’ She pointed at the empty seat opposite Toby.

‘You must have the wrong carriage,’ said denimjacket lady.

‘No.’ The old lady shook her head. ‘Somebody’s moved it.’

Toby stared intently at the floor under the opposite seats. There was a muddy train ticket and an opened cola can that had somehow managed to remain upright all this time.

The old lady shuffled around, peering between the rows.

Right now, Toby wanted to be anywhere else in the world except here. He wanted to turn back time so he could catch an earlier train or refuse to go to Gran’s or something – anything so that he hadn’t been here in this carriage, pushing that bag out of the window.

‘I have to find it.’ The old lady’s voice was beginning to shake. ‘That case contains something very precious to me.’ The train jolted. The old lady grabbed at a seat to stay upright. The cola can fell over and rolled across the floor.

‘Perhaps you should sit down,’ said Toby.

‘Yes,’ said the old lady, fixing Toby in the eye. ‘Perhaps. I. Should.’ She said the words very slowly and very clearly, as if each one had a full stop after it. Like she really wanted Toby to think about them.

She made her way over and sat down facing him, in the very seat where she’d left her bag.

She pulled a crumpled tissue out of her pocket. ‘I’ll never be able to replace it,’ she said. ‘I have to find that case.’

‘If your bag had something that important in it,’ said denim-jacket lady, ‘why did you leave it unattended?’

‘I left it here to save my place while I was in the toilet.’ The old lady blew her nose.

‘You were in the toilet? All that time?’ said tattoo man, looking between the headrests. ‘We’ve been on this train for ages. What in heaven’s name were you doing in there?’

‘Excuse me!’ Denim-jacket lady was turning out to be a world-class frowner. ‘It’s very rude to ask someone what they do in the toilet.’

Tattoo man sank back into his seat.

‘What’s the precious thing?’ asked Toby. He gave the cola can a nudge with the toe of his trainer. He hoped the precious thing might not really be that precious at all. Perhaps it was something you could just order off the Internet. If it was, he could maybe even replace it with his own money.

The old lady leaned towards Toby. ‘If you want, I can tell you the whole story. But it’s a terrifying tale. Once heard, it can never be unheard, not for as long as you live. Are you sure you want to hear it?’

Toby nodded.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Then come a little closer.’ Toby shuffled to the edge of his seat.

Denim-jacket lady scooted one place nearer.

Even tattoo man came round and sat close by to hear the tale.

‘A long time ago, when I was a beautiful young maiden, we had a summer so hot the ground baked your shoes as you walked, and the sun breathed fire from rise to set. I took to going out only after dark, when the air had cooled and moonlight spilled on to the treetops. One particular night, there was a glorious full moon. It illuminated the land with a haunting glow. I headed into the forest and went further than I’d ever been before.

‘The place was full of life. Foxes darted between trees, and ghostly owls flew overhead on silent wings. Eventually I came across a lake, shimmering in the darkness, and on its banks was a woman. She appeared to be a good deal older than I was, although I couldn’t be sure, for she wore a dark cloak